Before we left for Spring Break, we were learning how to read music using the ukulele. It’s important to review what we’ve learned every once in a while, so we don’t have to spend time re-learning what we already know! In class, I was teaching you one note at a time, and how it relates to the ukulele. Since not all of us will have ukuleles to play with at home, we will focus on just learning the names of the notes! Do you remember what this note is…? If you guessed middle C, you’re right! It’s called middle C, because it is in the middle of the grand staff: When we play music on the piano, we would use a grand staff like this, so that it covers both the high and the low sounds. We will only be focusing on learning on the notes on the upper staff, known as the treble clef! Notice how when the notes are travelling up and down the staff in steps like here, they move up in a pattern of line-space-line-space...? So, if you know where middle C is, you can always figure out the other notes by counting up, or down, 1 step at a time. There are other tricks that can be used to memorize the notes on the treble clef—by separating them into space notes and line notes. This way, we can see that the space notes spell out the word FACE, and we can use that to help us figure out those notes! With the line ones, they don’t spell out any word that we know, so a trick is to use an acronym to help us remember the beginning letters. For example, the one that I learnt was Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, but there are lots of other phrases: Elephants Get Big Dirty Feet Elvis Goes Belly Dancing Fridays Every Girl Bakes Delicious Fudge Can you come up with your own silly phrase to help you memorize the line notes? Test your knowledge by trying out game 4 in the following link Did you know? That learning to read music is like learning to read a new language! Not only are you gaining a new skill, you’re actually exercising the language centre of your brain, getting it ready for when you want to learn another language, whether it be music, French, Mandarin, or computer programming 😉 A bit more...My favourite play-along videos have come out with videos using instruments you can find at home, and a dancing one to get your bodies moving! You can be creative, and use whatever you think may make a good instrument to play along! Challenge your family to play and dance along with you!
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